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Gaining alignment around your plan

Learn how to cultivate hope among your employees and get everyone on the same page with a persuasive story and effective goal-setting strategies. Stimulate your thinking and share experiences to prompt discussion.

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Gaining alignment around your plan

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  1. Gaining alignment around your plan Rich Stillman President, The Upswing Group Diane Renihan CFO, Bag Borrow or Steal

  2. Goals for today • Stimulate your thinking • Share our shared and individual experiences • Prompt discussion page 2

  3. Gaining alignment • Cultivate hope among your employees • Make sure your plan tells a persuasivestory • Get everyone on the same page. • Literally. Repeatedly. Consistently. • Identify and engage cross functional deployment leaders for key strategic themes • Match your incentives to your goals • Be the behavior you seek page 3

  4. Leadership and hope • “The force multiplier throughout history has often been attributed to the leader's ability to generate hope.” page 4

  5. Hope: Dictionary definition • A feeling of expectation and a desire for a certain thing to happen • To look forward to something with desire and reasonable confidence page 5

  6. Hope: Business definition • An activating force that enables people, even when faced with the most overwhelming obstacles, to envision a promising future and to set and pursue goals page 6

  7. People with a high level of hope: • pursue goals with "affective zest” • tend to experience less stress and implement more effective coping strategies • more able to use feedback diagnostically to determine more successful goal attainment strategies in the future. • establish positive relationships with others • serve to make the group not only more productive but also, perhaps equally important, make it more fun page 7

  8. People with a high level of hope: • focus their efforts on both individual and collective goal attainment. • are better able to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty • are energized by the challenge of journeying into an undefined future without having all the answers yet knowing that in time the answers will be revealed page 8

  9. Cultivate hope: Tell a persuasive story • What are the elements of a good story? • Theme • Characters • Beginning, middle, end • Conflict/struggle • Progress and growth • Positive outcome • Your business plan needs to be a great story! • Your execution needs to have a beginning, middle and end - don’t lose the momentum page 9

  10. Example • Coinstar 2001 • Theme: “Make money, have a party, do it again next year!” • Struggle: we’ve been net income negative since the company was founded. Let’s work together to be net income positive this year! • Progress and growth: Aggressive objectives and strategies • Happy outcomes: Big party and big bonuses! page 10

  11. Cultivate Hope: Lead from strength • Link your key objectives to your key strengths • The higher the perceived likelihood of achieving the desired outcome, the higher the level of hope • Easier (and more intuitive) to build from strength page 11

  12. Cultivating Hope: One page plans • Get everyone on the same page. Literally. • One effective way: The A3 method • A3 size paper is roughly 11 x 17 • Express the entire plan on one page • Everyone can see how their work contributes to the key objectives • “I’m more inclined to believe when I know that everyone is pulling in the same direction.” page 12

  13. A3 Template Heading / Theme Plan Actual vs goal: this year Key learning Key themes for next year Do Key Goals Strategies Tactics Timelines/Due Dates Actr/Adjust Check Footnotes / Sign offs page 13

  14. Cascading A3’s • Everyone has an A3 • The CEO has the corporate A3 • Senior managers have their area A3’s • Manager’s, team leaders, individual contributors, etc. • Everyone signs off on their A3 with their manager • Builds commitment page 14

  15. Cultivate hope: Fight silo thinking • For each of the key strategic initiatives, identify a leader who is responsible for delivering results • Works across the organization • Encourages departments to work together • Leader has his/her own Initiative A3, and relevant line managers sign off on their part of the plan page 15

  16. Implement PDCA page 16

  17. Check & Adjust regularly • Reiterate the Story! • Review progress • Celebrate what’s going right, without sugar coating • Identify the gaps: actual versus target • Get re-confirmation of value of the goal • Identify causes for the gaps • What actions, in order of greatest impact can be taken to achieve the desired goal • Action planning for the key action items, due dates • Celebrate what just happened - We can do this! page 17

  18. Match incentives to goals • Easier said than done, but critically important • Hope grows as the desirability of the outcome grows page 18

  19. Be the behavior you seek • The leadership, starting with the CEO, should meet regularly with groups of employees • Opportunity to: • Tell the Story! • “Why I believe!” • Get feedback • Listen, respond, build trust page 19

  20. 3R’s: Reinforce Reinforce Reinforce • “…reinforce the value of the goals and their meaning to the follower and the larger group …work with the follower to identify alternative paths to goal attainment. In other words engage the follower in hopeful thinking.” page 20

  21. Build alignment now for 2009 • Start planning for next year NOW • Get all stakeholders involved as co-creators of your future • Employees, customers, partners, suppliers • It’s their future too • Treat annual planning as an on-going activity page 21

  22. rich@upswingllc.com www.upswingllc.com 206.412.7952

  23. Sources • Page 6: Luthans, F., & Avolio, B. (2003). Authentic leadership: A positive development approach. Positive Organizational Scholarship • Page 7-8 Michael, S. T. (2000). Hope conquers fear: Overcoming anxiety and panic attacks. In C. R. Snyder (Ed.), Handbook of hope: Theory, measures and applications. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 355-378; Snyder, C. R., Michael, S. T., & Cheavens, J. (1999). Hope as a psychotherapeutic foundation for nonspecific factors, placebos, and expectancies. In M.A. Huble, B. Duncan, & S. Miller (Eds.), Heart and soul of change (pp. 179-200). Washington, DC: American: Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13:4, 249-275: Snyder, C. R., Cheavens, J. & Sympson, S. C. (1997) Hope: An Individual Motive for Social Commerce, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice, 1:2, 107-118: Ludema, J. D., Wilmot, T. B., & Srivastva, S (August, 1997). Organization hope: Reaffirming the constructive task of social and organizational inquiry. Human Relations, 50:8, 1015-1053. • Page 19: Bruce Winston, “Towards a deeper understanding of hope and leadership.” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies (2005) page 23

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